171 – Shaykh Abū al-Ḥusayn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Yaḥyā related to us—this was read to him in Shaʿbān, 451 AH. He said: Shaykh Abū al-Ḥusayn ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Bishrān related to us—read to him in Jumādā al-Ākhirah, 407 AH. He said: Abū ʿAlī Ḥusayn ibn Ṣafwān al-Baradhaʿī informed us. He said: ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad Ibn Abī al-Dunyā narrated to us. He said: Yūsuf ibn Mūsā narrated to us. He said: ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Mūsā narrated to us, from Isrāʾīl, from Abū Isḥāq, from ʿAmr ibn Maymūn, who said:

ʿAbd Allāh ibn Masʿūd ⦗115⦘—and in … he said—told us:

“Jonah—peace be upon him—had warned his people of an impending punishment and informed them that it would reach them in three days. They therefore separated every mother from her child, then went out, crying aloud to Allah Most High and seeking His forgiveness, and so the punishment was lifted from them.

At daybreak Jonah waited for the punishment, but saw nothing. In those days, anyone who made a claim without proof was put to death, so he departed in anger. He came upon some people aboard a ship; they took him on and recognised him. No sooner had he boarded than the vessel began lurching right and left. The crew said, ‘What is the matter with your ship?’ The others replied, ‘We do not know.’

Jonah said, ‘There is a servant on board who has fled from his Lord; the ship will not move until you cast him overboard.’ They answered, ‘As for you, Prophet of Allah, by Allah we will never cast you overboard.’ Jonah told them, ‘Draw lots, and whoever’s name is drawn must be thrown in.’ They drew lots, and the lot fell to Jonah three times, so he went overboard.

A whale had already been commanded concerning him. When he was cast into the sea it swallowed him and plunged with him to the ocean floor, and Jonah heard the pebbles glorifying Allah. He cried out from the depths of darkness, ‘There is no god but You; glory be to You! I was indeed among the wrongdoers’ (Qur’an 21:87)—three layers of darkness: the whale’s belly, the darkness of night, and the darkness of the sea.

⦗116⦘ ‘So We cast him upon the open shore while he was sick’ (Qur’an 37:145). He was like a newly hatched chick, stripped of feathers. Allah then caused a gourd-vine to grow over him; he would rest beneath it and eat from it. When the vine withered, he wept over it, so Allah revealed to him: ‘Do you weep over a plant when it withers, yet you do not weep over one hundred thousand—or even more—whom We might destroy?’”